AI The third deadbolt clacked open under Aurora’s thumb, and the chain went taut in her fist as she cracked the door a few inches.
A pale hand slid into the gap before she could think better of it, fingers long, nails neat, the cuff of a charcoal sleeve spotless.
“Rory,” Lucien Moreau said, as if he had left her a message and she had taken her time returning it.
She jammed her shoulder into the door and shoved. The chain bit. His hand withdrew on its own, unhurried. He stood in the corridor with his ivory-handled cane angled across his body like an accessory. Like a promise.
“You’ve got nerve,” she said.
He looked her over with the same clinical attention he gave a crime scene. His gaze caught on her left wrist where the chain had pressed the skin above the small crescent scar, and something in his expression shifted, a flicker that did not reach his mouth.
“You’ve got deadbolts,” he said. “Three. Eva’s paranoia has become contagious.”
“Eva’s alive. Paranoia helps.”
“Let me in.”
“No.”
His heterochromatic eyes held hers, one amber like old whisky, the other a clean, depthless black. He did not blink. He did not plead. He simply waited, as if her refusal belonged to him too.
Ptolemy padded up behind her and released a low, offended noise. The cat’s tabby tail puffed out like a bottle brush.
Lucien’s nostrils flared.
“Your cat remembers me.”
“My cat hates you.”
“Cats hate most things. It’s their charm .”
Aurora tightened her grip on the chain.
“You don’t get to stand outside my door and charm your way back into my life.”
“I’m not charming.”
“You’re breathing. Same thing.”
He leaned closer, and the corridor filled with him, the scent of expensive soap with something sharper under it, metal and smoke. His cane tip clicked once against the floor, deliberate.
“You shouldn’t open doors when you don’t know who’s there,” he said.
“You knocked,” she said. “Like a civilised person.”
“I knocked because you would have shot me if I didn’t.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
A pause stretched. It filled with all the unsaid things, heavy and familiar . Six months ago she had stood three streets away from him, bleeding through her shirt, while he watched the alley mouth with cold focus and told her to run.
He had not run with her.
Aurora slid the chain free and swung the door wide enough to be a mistake.
Lucien stepped in at once. He moved like he had measured the space before he entered, like the cramped flat belonged to his body already. His shoes avoided the scattered papers on the floor without looking. His cane stayed close, angled so the concealed blade could appear in a heartbeat.
Aurora shut the door and snapped all three deadbolts with quick, angry hands. Each metallic click sounded too final.
“You’re here,” she said.
He tipped his head.
“I am.”
“Why.”
Lucien’s gaze travelled over the flat, the stacks of books, the scroll tubes, the scribbled notes pinned to corkboard. A city of research built on caffeine and stubbornness. The air smelled of old paper, curry drifting up from the shop below, and the faint, unmistakable tang of cat.
He reached out and lifted a page between two fingers, reading without permission.
“Reverse Greek,” he murmured.
Aurora snatched it back.
“Don’t touch.”
He raised one eyebrow . It made him look amused, and that irritation sparked again, sharp as a match struck too close to skin.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
“I keep myself occupied. You should try it instead of showing up unannounced like some sort of… well-dressed fungus.”
A faint smile cut across his mouth, then vanished.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m furious,” she corrected. “Angry is for people who get apologies.”
Lucien’s fingers tightened around the cane handle. Ivory, polished, the kind of object meant to be held by someone who never laboured with his hands. Yet his knuckles whitened as if restraint cost him.
“I didn’t come for absolution.”
“You came because you want something,” she said. “You always do.”
Ptolemy stalked around Lucien’s ankles, circling once, twice, tail high, then stopped in front of him and hissed.
Lucien looked down.
“Charming,” he said, with a softness that did not belong on him. He crouched, slow, and held out two fingers.
The cat swatted him.
Lucien’s mouth twitched.
“Your cat has boundaries. I respect that.”
“Try respecting mine.”
He stood again, taller than her, shoulders squared beneath the tailored suit. The charcoal fabric looked almost black in the dimness of the flat, clean lines against clutter. He had always looked like he belonged in places with marble floors and locked doors. Not here above a curry house on Brick Lane, where the kettle never stopped and Eva collected secrets like stamps.
Lucien’s eyes returned to Aurora’s face, not drifting away this time.
“Where is Eva?” he asked.
“Out,” Aurora said. “And before you ask, no, I’m not her secretary. What do you want, Lucien.”
He exhaled through his nose. Not a sigh. A calculation.
“You have something of mine.”
Aurora let out a single laugh. It came out sharp.
“I have nothing of yours.”
He stepped closer. The space between them shrank to the width of her breath. Aurora did not move back. She hated that her body recognised him, remembered him, pulled tight like a drawn bow.
Lucien’s voice dropped.
“You took it from me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did,” he said. “In the alley.”
Aurora’s jaw clenched .
“In the alley, I was bleeding. You were leaving.”
His gaze slid to her throat, to the pulse there, then up again. That tiny intimacy made her skin prickle, as if he had touched without permission.
“I didn’t leave,” he said.
“You watched me go,” she snapped. “You let me run alone while you stayed behind to clean up your mess.”
He did not flinch. He rarely did.
“You ran because I told you to,” he said. “You survived because you listened.”
The calm certainty of it made her want to throw something at him. Instead, she held still. Cool-headed, she reminded herself. Intelligent. Out-of-the-box thinking. Not out-of-control.
“What did I take,” she said.
Lucien’s hand slipped inside his jacket. Aurora’s muscles tensed.
He withdrew a small square of black cloth, folded with care, and held it out. A handkerchief. Plain, unmarked, the sort of thing a man like him might carry for show.
Aurora stared at it, then at him.
“You came all this way for a handkerchief.”
“It wasn’t plain when you took it,” he said.
Aurora did not reach for it.
“It had blood on it,” she said, quietly .
Lucien’s mouth flattened.
“Not mine.”
Something cold nudged the base of her spine.
“Whose,” she asked.
He held her gaze.
“Yours.”
Aurora’s stomach tightened.
She remembered it. A flash of movement, her own hands slick with blood, Lucien pressing the cloth into her palm and wrapping her wrist with a pressure that bordered on tenderness . His fingers had lingered. His voice had softened, just once, when he said her name.
Then he had shoved her away.
“I threw it out,” she said.
Lucien’s eyes narrowed .
“No, you didn’t.”
Aurora’s mouth tasted of copper that did not exist.
“How do you know.”
“Because I can smell it on you,” he said.
The words slid under her skin. Not poetic. Not flirtatious. Fact.
Aurora crossed her arms.
“You can smell my rubbish habits. Congratulations.”
Lucien tilted his head, studying her, and it irritated her that he looked like he enjoyed puzzles .
“Show me your hands,” he said.
“No.”
“Rory.”
The way he said it sent a thin tremor through her chest. Not because it sounded sweet. Because it sounded like ownership, like he had never stopped saying it in his head.
Aurora’s eyes flashed.
“You don’t use that name,” she said. “You forfeited it.”
Lucien’s jaw flexed. For a moment he looked less polished, more feral at the edges, like something beneath the suit pressed against its seams.
“You can call yourself whatever you like,” he said. “Aurora. Laila. Malphora, if you want to be dramatic. I’ll still find you.”
Her skin tightened.
“Is that meant to be romantic,” she asked.
“It’s meant to be true.”
Ptolemy jumped onto the table behind her and knocked a pen onto the floor. It rolled, click-click, until it hit Lucien’s shoe.
Lucien did not look down.
Aurora forced her breath to steady.
“Why are you here,” she asked again, slower this time. “Not the handkerchief excuse. The reason.”
Lucien’s hand closed around the cloth. He tucked it away as if the conversation had already moved on.
“Someone asked about you,” he said.
Aurora’s lips parted, then shut. Her first instinct went to Evan, to bruises and threats and Cardiff phone numbers she blocked. Her second went to things worse, things with teeth.
“Who,” she said.
Lucien’s gaze flicked towards the door, then back to her.
“A collector,” he said. “He buys favours and sells debts.”
“I don’t deal with collectors.”
“He thinks you do.”
Aurora’s pulse quickened .
“I deliver noodles for a restaurant,” she said. “If someone wants to collect my debt, they can take my student overdraft and choke on it.”
Lucien’s mouth tightened, a hint of humour without warmth .
“He doesn’t want money.”
“What does he want,” Aurora asked, though she already knew the answer would be ugly.
Lucien stepped even closer, until the front of his suit nearly brushed her jumper. Aurora lifted her chin. Their bodies held a line of tension like a wire.
“He wants what you picked up in that alley,” he said.
Aurora’s gaze cut to his cane, then back to his face.
“I picked up trauma and a scar,” she said. “Take your pick.”
Lucien’s voice lowered.
“You picked up a name.”
Silence snapped into place.
Aurora’s throat tightened.
“No,” she said.
Lucien watched her like he watched doors before he opened them.
“Yes,” he said. “And you’ve been carrying it around like it’s nothing, like it’s not a lit match in your pocket.”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do,” he said. “You read Eva’s notes. You memorised her sigils. You can’t help yourself. Smart girls always touch the hot stove just to see if the rules apply to them.”
Aurora’s face heated, anger and something else, something that came too close to shame.
“You didn’t come to warn me,” she said. “You came to control it.”
Lucien’s eyes darkened, the black one swallowing light.
“I came because he followed me,” he said.
A knock hit the door. Not polite. Not human. It sounded like bone against wood .
Ptolemy sprang off the table and vanished under the sofa with a growl.
Aurora’s spine stiffened. Lucien did not look surprised. He looked vindicated.
Another knock. Harder. The door shuddered in its frame.
Aurora’s voice came out tight.
“You led him here.”
Lucien’s hand slid down the cane, fingers finding a hidden seam.
“I brought him to a door with three deadbolts,” he said. “I didn’t bring him to you.”
The wood creaked as something heavy leaned into it. Dust sifted down from the top of the frame.
Aurora reached for the nearest thing with weight , a thick hardback book from the table. Her grip held, steady despite the shake in her wrist.
“Tell me what he is,” she said.
Lucien’s smile showed no teeth.
“Persistent,” he said. “And hungry.”
The first deadbolt buckled with a metallic shriek, and the door jumped inward an inch against the remaining locks.
Lucien’s blade slid out of the cane with a clean, deadly whisper .
“Stay behind me,” he said.
The second deadbolt snapped like a gunshot.